Vehicle And Spaceship Damage

[atgxtg]

I'm not sure if different rules for different classes of vehicle is a good idea. It could over complicate things. I don't really weant different dmage rules for ground cars, boats,, speeders, walkers, starfighters, captial ships, ornithopers and so on. But I could see making some adjustments for Capital Ships.
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THe captial ship rules in the rules upgrade and in Star Warriors handled damage in terms of pips rather than terms of Lt/Hvy/Sev/Damage levels. A Captial ship that took 1-3 pips was lightly damaged, 4-8 heavily damaged, and so on.
It took a lot to take out a capital ship in comparison to a single fighter. THe rules fro, the RC can almost port over to 2R&E. WE just have toupdate some stuff to 2E, like the damage tables and movement rates.


BTW, in the Fleet Combat thing I'm working on, I swiped the damage in pips. Since I"m using the minitatures rules method of 1D6+modifers, I can just use the difference betwwwen damage and hull rolls as the pips taken.

[vanir]

I'm not familiar with star warriors but I'm sure you've got a very workable system in mind.

The one I was thinking of was just a simple revision of damage escalation.

thus...

For Starfighters, shuttles and speeders:
If damaged, any amount of additional damage increases the damage level by a minimum of one level and maximum of damage received due to reduced structural integrity.
eg. a lightly damaged starfighter is lightly damaged again, damage increases to heavily damaged. If lightly damaged and receives a second result of heavy damage, the craft is heavily damaged.
Optional rule: PC and important NPC characters always get a (typically moderate-difficult) survival roll against automatic death by ship destruction to make it to escape pods or activate an ejection system whilst the overall hull is breaking up.

For Walkers, freighters and capital ships:
If damaged, the total damage accumulated to the overall structural integrity of the vessel cannot exceed the damage received. So that capital ships or freighters can be lightly damaged any number of times, with successive individual systems loss or crew deaths, but the hull code must be heavily damaged with a single attack to move to heavily damaged, severely damaged by an attack to become severely damaged, etc.
This is because the overall structural integrity of capital ships and sturdily constructed multicrew vessels is constructed separately to the fitment of crew superstructure, living areas and life support installations.
eg. a capital ship can be assaulted by a large number of starfighters and light assault craft, rendering the vessel a burning hulk with all individual systems destroyed and no life on board, without actually threatening the structural integrity of the hull/keel itself (unless special damage like a reactor explosion is rendered). It can then be towed to a shipyard and refitted for future service under another flag, at great expense.

[atgxtg]

[vanir]

I'm naturally analoguing starfighters with jet fighters and walkers with AFVs, even the construction descript of an X-Wing, a titanium hull is like an Eagle or a Flanker with a high titanium content in construction.

Compare an exceptional jet fighter acceleration forces at +9/-3G (+7/-1 more typical) to a typical dragster at 11+G.

Aircraft are very lightly constructed for obvious reasons, sturdy in the realm of aircraft isn't like sturdy in the realm of ground vehicles. Spacecraft are even more lightly constructed since they only really move in frames of reference, they only need as much structural rigidity as it takes to maintain a pressurised atmosphere, since no amount of armouring can help against even a micrometeroid travelling in another frame of reference (by default tens of thousands of km/h relative velocity and nuke-like kinetic energy).

However this isn't well translated to WEG RP because of scaling, starfighters are a bigger scale than walkers, but should be less sturdily constructed, less armoured, less capable of resisting a kinetic force with its structural integrity intact.
My inclusion of walkers in the higher class of resistance to damage escalation is to reconcile this.

To reconcile it with prose I'd say something like, the scaling increase from walker to starfighter is due to relative velocities and frames of reference. For example hitting a water craft say with a FlaK gun (DP gun) does a given damage over a period of firing time, but hitting a starfighter capable of flipping its shields on and bumping 20,000km/h+ when the RWR klaxon tells him he's being targeted reduces the amount of fire you can lay down on the target from a relative stationary position in a given amount of time.
Add to this the higher power output of a starfighter allows for much more powerful energy and particle shielding which helps increase the scale of soak.

But the actual structure itself is comparatively light, designed for high performance. Its resistance to acceleration forces in flight is provided by inertial dampeners (which turn 5000G into 5G).
Ultimately if a starfighter does actually take a damage result, whether by enemy action or exceeding spaceframe/equipment limitations, it is in fact quite fragile in terms of vehicle construction.

Well how rational can one be with sci-fi tech anyway, but this kind of explanation sounds good enough to me so I can use conventional ideas of war materiel as analoguous to the SWU tech in game, adding the tabletop strategy element of a combat sim or strategy game to the RPG action and Player tasking.

[CRMcNeill]

I juggled the scale system for a better fit, putting Walkers and Starfighters in the same scale class. It makes it more realistic, and definitely makes the AT-AT a tougher nut to crack; starfighters now have to used proton torpedoes or combined fire tactics to even damage one.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[atgxtg]

[atgxtg]

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[Esoomian]

[CRMcNeill]

That's where rapid fire rules and blast radius effects come into play. Recall the scene in ESB where Veer's AT-AT fires a blast that hits near a running Alliance trooper and still takes him down.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

But looking in the PDF for the ATAT there is no blast radius given for their weapons.

Weapons:
2 Heavy Laser Cannons (fire-linked)
Fire Arc: Front
Crew: 1 (co-pilot or commander)
Skill: Vehicle blasters
Fire Control: 2D
flange: 50-500/1.5/3 km
Damage: 6D
2 Medium Blasters (fire-linked)
Fire Arc: Front
Crew: 1 (co-pilot or commander)
Skill: Vehicle blasters
Fire Control: 2D
Range: 50-200/500/1 km
Damage: 3D
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[vanir]

garkhal we use an ad hoc blast radius for vehicle/starship weapons when used as artillery.

Damage result in metres blast radius for starfighter scale weapons and in tens of metres blast radius for capital ship weapons used in orbital bombardment. When targeting objects they're using direct fire, but when firing for effect as artillery we use blast radius.

Haven't had to do walkers or speeders like this yet, in battles with those involved we've always had listed artillery to work with, but off the top of my head I might do something like a half damage result in metres radius for walkers and a third for speeders (which will wind up being only a couple of metres blast radius for most).

We do a lot of miniatures style battles.

[atgxtg]

[vanir]

And in some LucasArts/LFL publications the four gigantic, twin barrelled turrets on each side of the bridge superstructure on the SD film model somehow becomes 60 turbolaser emplacements...

fudged in later publication by listing both, so now they have partial big gun turrets and 60 turbolaser emplacements. Yet the only other turbolaser emplacements you can actually see on the model is a quad in a lateral notch on either side, and in some filmed scenes there is a couple of blasts coming from around the hangar area where there are a couple of protrusions which maybe considered another turbolaser emplacement. That would make 12 at best, plus the four twins on either side of the bridge complex.

Then you have the issue of interpretation, are you interpreting the text correctly? I've read turbolaser descriptions before whereby individual shots are described as low powered compared to starfighter laser cannon, but this is how turbolasers work, they fire many more shots using a bank of capacitors for stored energy so the total amount of damage laid onto the target in any concentrated attack, is in fact much higher. And there are capital scale heavy laser cannon on ships like the Eclipse, which do really massive damage. So maybe you're right, the turbolaser emplacements (three quad turrets) on the actual ISD model are starfighter scale low powered barrel weapons firing at very high rates for extra damage, and the massive twin barrelled turrets on the sides of the superstructure are unlisted heavy capital class laser cannon that do massive unlisted damage?


That could be like comparing the WW2 gun armament controversy (was big in England in 1936), 20mm guns versus rifle calibre and fifty cal machine guns. As it turned out fifties are just as effective as small cannon like the 20mm, but you use them differently. Cannon you fire precisely, MG you lay down fire so that total destruction is equivalent to seconds of fire laid onto the target, rather than scoring individual hits per se. So cannon equipped craft generally put them on the fuselage centreline for better accuracy, MG equipped craft generally put them in the wings so more guns/ammo can be carried but you have to worry about convergence settings.
Still, a P-51 takes down a heavily armoured fighter just as easily as a BF-109 and a P-47 takes one down as easily as an FW-190.

The US switched from fifties to 20mm cannon armament in the jet age (on fighters and as defensive weapons on bombers), initially purely because of greater lethal range. With advanced gunsights making the most of ballistics, you increase lethal range by about a third with the change, and you need gun range in the jet age before reliable AAMs, it's hard enough to get an e/a into your sights long enough to gun him as it is, let alone with negligable kill range. Plus ROF was increased dramatically postwar on aerial cannon.